A small group of us from WWF-Canada had made a whirlwind tour of centers of arctic expertise as we developed the analysis for the project and received feedback/validation from academics and fellow ENGOs.
Tonight, I’m headed to Moscow to present the RACER project at the “Problems of Adaptation to Climate Change Conference” on behalf of the project team. It’s a timely presentation as WWF will present an introductory handbook of the analysis to a working group of the Arctic Council this week.
For me, this trip to Moscow is bittersweet. In many ways it signals the end of what was an incredibly challenging, but ultimately inspiring task: develop a new approach to conservation planning in the Arctic. An approach that not only acknowledges the looming challenge of rapidly and drastically changing arctic environments as a response to climatic change, but also attempts to proactively identify key features of arctic ecosystems that help contribute to their stability and durability — or, as we refer to it, their “resilience”.
